Washington Apple Pi

Retired SIG: Google Me This…

By Bob Jarecke

Ten faithful followers of the WAP Retired SIG met at the Pi Office on July
27, 2006. The topic for this month's meeting was "All things Google," with
a particular focus Google Earth. Nancy Little, who had the lead on the program,
was in place and ready at the appointed time of 1:00 o'clock.

With the aid of the overhead projector, Nancy demonstrated the details of
using the free, downloadable Google Earth application. She played with the
controls and tool bars, responding to the numerous suggestions on where to
go and what to do. Google Earth provides maps, directions and visualization
of thousands of locations, and we proved it by ‘visiting’ the
Pi office, the Grand Canyon and the Eiffel Tower from an overhead satellite
perspective. A good way to plan your next trip would be to scope it out via
Google Earth!

Bob pointed out there are a few other Google-related applications that are
useful. One such item demonstrated was the Google Plug-in for Address Book.
He also shared with the group an adjunct application named Googalyzer that
has its own browser style interface that connects with any number of Google
search topics.

As a separate lesson, we learned how to use the Speech command to speak
text. One person said they use it to review their documents for typos, explaining
that it is easier to hear mistakes than to find them while reading; this
is especially true of material we have written ourselves. It was a good suggestion,
and was part of a good meeting.

The next meeting's topic was not decided upon, so the agenda still has to
be refined. See you in August!